Police used a “bomb robot” early Friday to kill a gunman after five police officers were killed and seven others were wounded in downtown Dallas during a protest over recent police shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, officials said.

Investigators have discovered bomb-making materials, rifles and a “personal journal of combat tactics” in the home of the black former Army reservist who went on a shooting rampage against Dallas police, officials said Friday.

Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, a Dallas-area resident, was a “loner” with no criminal history who “wanted to kill white people” and “especially white officers,” said police, who are still investigating whether he acted alone in perpetrating the deadliest day for law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001.

Five Dallas police officers died and nine other people were wounded in the attack, which unfurled Thursday night in the midst of a large protest against recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.

The injured included seven police officers and two civilians.

Using an unprecedented tactic in American law enforcement – and apparently adopting technology used by the U.S. military – Dallas police said they detonated an unmanned “bomb robot” to kill Johnson early Friday morning after negotiators failed to bring an end to an hours-long standoff in a downtown parking garage.

Before his death, Johnson “bantered” with police negotiators, a federal official said, adding that the suspect did not appear nervous. He indicated he had been preparing for the assault, the official said, and Dallas Police Chief David Brown, hinting at the possibility of co-conspirators, said “this was a well-planned, well thought out evil tragedy by these suspects.”

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At least three other people were taken into custody in connection with the shooting Thursday night, but they have not been identified and no information has been given on their possible roles in the attack.

Officials had initially reported that multiple snipers opened fire on police, but said they were told by the gunman during the standoff that he was acting alone.

Live updates: Dallas police shootings »

At one point, the gunman had told officials “the end is coming, and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us,” Brown said. Officials said negotiation ended with gunfire.

Johnson had no ties to terror groups, a U.S. law enforcement official said, and had relatives in Mesquite, Texas, just east of Dallas.

But on Facebook, Johnson expressed an interest in black separatist groups such as the New Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which describes the organizations as “hate groups.”

[The New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam are, to my knowledge, not separate groups, but the NBPP is rather a division of the NOI. And why are Los Angeles Times operatives citing the SPLC as an authority on anything? That is because the media and the SPLC operatives are political allies. And the term “haste group” is meaningless.]

In his Facebook profile photo, Johnson wore a purple, yellow and gold dashiki and thrust his fist into the air. His cover photo displayed the red, black and green stripes of the Pan-African flag.

He had joined several groups that made allusions to the Black Panther Party, including a group called the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named for the black power group’s co-founder. The group, which was founded last year to fight police brutality [Bull; if it says that, it was really founded to wage war on the police, on behalf of colored criminals, just like the original Black Panthers, whose co-founder, Huey Newton was a cop-killer], teaches its members self-defense and conducts what it calls “armed patrols” through neighborhoods where the police have killed black men.

[That is an open threat to murder cops, by a group that has no interest in stopping black criminals.]

“We’d never seen him and we don’t know him,” member Erick Khafre said in a telephone interview. “The gun club isn’t affiliated with him in any way.”

Last week, Johnson shared a video of pilot whales being killed by whalers in the shallow waters off the Faroe Islands. “Look at the joy on their faces,” Johnson wrote. “Why do so many whites (not all) enjoy killing and participating in the death of innocent beings?”

He continued: “The church members and regular citizens (offspring of terrorist invaders) who stood around watching, cheering, eating food with their families while watching one of our ancestors be beaten, noose tied around their neck, hung up high for all to see… then they all stand around and smile while their picture is taken with a hung, burned and brutalized black person.”

Johnson’s sister on her own Facebook page mourned the loss of her brother and questioned why he had gone to the downtown demonstration.

“I keep saying it’s not true… my eyes hurt from crying,” Nicole Johnson wrote in a post she later deleted. Minutes later, she posted again. “The news will say what they think but those that knew him know this wasn’t like him,” she wrote. “This is the biggest loss we’ve had.”

[So, she’s crying not because of the innocent lives her brother slaughtered, but because he got himself killed?]

Outside City Hall on Friday, activists said they did not recognize Johnson or his name, and had never seen him at a protest.

[What a liar. BLM is a terrorist organization that has always called for the murder of policemen: “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!,” “Pigs in a blanket; fry ‘em like bacon!,” and many BLMers celebrated the Houston Massacre. Dominique Alexander got exactly what he wanted.]

Military records provided by the Department of Defense say that Johnson served in the U.S. Army Reserve as a carpentry and masonry specialist from March 2009 to April 2015, including a tour in Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014 with the 420th Engineer Brigade.

Authorities believe Johnson took frequent target practice, according to a law enforcement official.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch said federal agencies already are cooperating in the investigation.

“We intend to provide any assistance that we can to investigate the attack and also to help heal a community that has been severely shaken and deeply scarred by an unfathomable tragedy,” Lynch said at a news conference in Washington.

[First of all, you can’t “heal” a community of anything, unless it’s an epidemic that did not kill anyone. But political and media hacks almost always use “heal” in a dishonest, metaphorical sense. I recently saw a feature writer use “heal” in the proper sense for the first time I could remember. It was in a puff piece about a young Indian girl who wants to become a doctor—a healer. I couldn’t believe my eyes!
Second of all, the blood of the five murdered and nine wounded victims are on Loretta Lynch’s hands. If she hadn’t wreaked havoc, with her support and incitement of black criminals and terrorists, Micah Xavier Johnson might never have committed this black terrorist attack. If Loretta Lynch wanted to help anyone, she’d resign. Of course, the terrorist-in-chief provided more support for many more years, in the War on Police.]

“Our hearts are broken by this loss,” she said.

[Liar. She got exactly what she wanted.]

President Obama, in Poland for a NATO summit, earlier expressed condolences to the families of the victims in Dallas.

“There has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement,” Obama said. “… There is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks, or any violence against law enforcement. Justice will be done.”

[He has incited such attacks for his entire political career.]

Brown said a hostage negotiator spoke with Johnson at length before he was killed about 2:30 a.m. According to the chief, the gunman said he was upset “with white people” and with recent police shootings. He also said that he was not affiliated with any groups and that he acted alone, Brown said.

[Well, then, I guess we have to believe him!]

“The suspect said we will eventually find the IEDs,” Brown said, a reference to explosives. “He wanted to kill officers. And he expressed killing white people, killing white officers, he expressed anger for Black Lives Matter.”

[“He expressed anger for Black Lives Matter.” What the heck does that mean, oin English?]

“We saw no other option than to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension to detonate where the suspect was,” Brown said, adding that, “other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger.”

Brown said reports that the suspect shot himself were incorrect. “The suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb,” he said.

Brown said he spoke overnight with the families of the officers who had been shot, adding that most of those who were injured had been released from the hospital. He said three officers listed in critical condition were improving but that they and the department needed the public’s support.

Of the dozen officers shot – 10 men and two women – eight are Dallas police and four are Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) officers, officials said.

“They know the city is grieving with them,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said.

Rawlings said that when he met with the wounded officers, he expressed support on behalf of the city and also made them a promise: “We’ll get the bad guys.”

One of the officers had surgery overnight and was doing well, Rawlings said. He said he spoke with another officer shot in the leg, and another shot in the arm. “The one shot in the leg – three officers from his squad had died, had gone down around him,” Rawlings said. “He felt sad for the other officers, that people don’t understand the danger of dealing with a protest. What it can do is put our officers in harm’s way.”

The shooting broke out late Thursday during what had been a peaceful protest against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police officers in a Minneapolis suburb and in Baton Rouge, La. About 800 people were marching through downtown flanked by about 100 police officers when the gunfire began.

Rev. Jeff Hood, 32, a Baptist minister based in Dallas, helped organize the protest as a way for people to gather and vent.

"It was a peaceful protest, no question about it. The entire thing was peaceful," said Wood, who was marching alongside a police sergeant at one point.

They were marching in front of several hundred people when Hood heard rapid-fire gunshots: pah, pah, pah-pah-pah.

"Immediately I looked up and saw two police officers that had gone down," he said. "I saw it. I mean, I saw people drop. I knew."

Wood grabbed his own shirt, instinctively, "Because I thought I might have been shot." He had not. He looked up again, and saw the police sergeant take off down the street toward the gunshots. Hood ran the opposite direction, shouting to the crowd, "Run, active shooter!"

Hood had a small cross and held it up above the crowd, he said, guiding them like a shepherd's crook. Many of them kept asking him why the shooting happened. He wondered the same thing.

"The rest of the night I spent ministering people, trying to make some sense of what happened," he said.

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Officials identified one of the slain officers as Brent Thompson, 43, who had worked for the DART Police Department since 2009. He was the department’s first officer to be killed in the line of duty. Three other DART officers were injured but were expected to recover, officials said.

“As you can imagine, our hearts are broken,” the transit district said in a statement. “This is something that touches every part of our organization.”

The other officers who were killed were members of the Dallas Police Department, officials said.

Amanda Mann, a 35-year-old Dallas resident, said she drove downtown with friends shortly before 7 p.m. to catch the beginning of the protest in Belo Garden Park, which she had learned about through Facebook. For the first hour it felt familiar, much like previous Black Lives Matter protests she’s been to, she said.

“Until 7:45 there were just some speakers, they were positive and proactive, then they said we were going to line up and march,” she said.

Mann said that around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., as the rally was dying down and she was walking to her car near El Centro College, she heard the first barrage of shots, and then a group of protesters came running toward her, away from the gunfire. For about 40 minutes, she said, police shouted at protesters to move from one block to the next as officers tried to chase down suspects.

Mann said that at one point she lay down with a group on the grassy knoll of Dealey Plaza, a downtown park that is best known as the site of the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. At another point, she said, she was near the county jail a few blocks away before running across the Commerce Street Bridge over the Trinity River, away from the scene.

“It was like nothing I had seen before,” Mann said. “We just kept following what the police told us to do.”

[But you hate the police. Why did you listen to them?]

Times staff writers W.J. Hennigan in Washington and Laura Nelson in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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________________________________________

UPDATES: [Read in reverse order.]
2:40 p.m.: The article was updated with additional information on what was found in the suspect’s apartment, and information from the Southern Poverty Law Center.11:49 a.m.: The article was updated with information from the suspect’s Facebook page.11:31 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the gunman and comments from those who participated in Friday night’s protests.9:17 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch.8:26 a.m.: This article was updated with additional details about the suspect.7:08 a.m.: This article has been updated with an identification of the suspect.6:59 a.m.: This article has been updated throughout with additional details and background.
This article was originally published at 5:44 a.m.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

He's got a criminal history now,doesn't he?If the mother or the black neighbor(who I saw on NBC,getting interviewed through a closed front door)had told someone how effed up he was acting--he wouldn't have had the chance to commit these crimes.He could've gone to a nice quiet room--under supervision.But they both kept quiet.A lesson that no one ever remembers.--GR Anonymous

Did you see Jeff Hood tonight?A guest on Foxnews "Kelly Report".She showed him yesterday--a white traitor shouting,"Goddamn white people" over and over again as he was surrounded by blacks.The video was taken shortly before the Dallas protest Thursday night.It's an atrocity to watch.It might be on YouTube.---GR Anonymous

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